


a perfect student

by afterism



Category: Cinderella (Fairy Tale)
Genre: Extra Trick, Gen, Mentor/Protégé
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-27
Updated: 2015-10-27
Packaged: 2018-04-28 12:57:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5091617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afterism/pseuds/afterism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stepmother has three girls to potentially shape in her image. She chooses the best.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a perfect student

**Author's Note:**

  * For [makiyakinabe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/makiyakinabe/gifts).



There's a young woman in a bonnet browsing by the window, next to her dark-haired friend. They're not very good at keeping their voices down.

"She's so good, that woman, not showing any favouritism between those children," the one in the bonnet says, running a green ribbon between her fingers without looking at it.

"Yes, it must be hard," her companion says, quieter in the way that a stabbing is quieter than a beating. "When her step-daughter seems to have the brains and beauty for the three of them."

"Oh!" the woman exclaims, and then covers her giggles behind her hand.

Ella pretends she is deaf to impropriety, just like Stepmother taught her, and smiles serenely as she picks out a cherry-red ribbon.

"If I may say so, Mother," she starts, because that's part of what she must learn, Stepmother says: the precise difference between who she must be in public and who she can be at home. "This would go beautifully with Hilda's red dress."

Hilda looks up at her name, and then looks at the ribbon with a sniff and a glaze of want in her eyes. Ella is lying, of course, Hilda's dress shades towards orange and it will clash horribly, but Hilda doesn't have the refinement to recognise it.

Stepmother does, of course. "Yes," Stepmother says, after a pause. "But dear Hilda has already chosen her ribbon. Here, Ella, let me see this blue against your complexion," she says, holding up a soft, ice-colour strip that brushes cool against her cheek. Ella's skin warms pink, and then flushes more as she realises she's letting something show.

"Look, she looks just like a frigid little ice maiden," Greta snaps, her cheeks red as always. She would look almost acceptable in greens, Ella thinks, but she insists on wearing the most hideous yellows. Hilda laughs nastily.

Her step-sisters haven't yet learnt the association between how horrible they are to her outside, and the cruelty of Ella's punishments once they're home. They haven't yet learnt that they're _Ella's_ punishments.

\-----

Ella wonders impatiently if this is some trick of Stepmother's, a punishment disguised as a lesson: people do not keep their promises.

She fists her hands in her skirts and then hurriedly smooths it back down, the creases lost in the taffeta. She still looks perfect. She _must_ look perfect, and effortless with it. That's easy compared to the war in her chest, the fight between how she must always obey Stepmother and how she must learn to rely on no one but herself. It's not always immediately obvious which lesson she's supposed to be following.

That is a lesson in itself, Ella supposes, but it does nothing to calm the thud of her heart. The horses snort suddenly, and there are footsteps coming quick across the gravel. Ella holds her breath.

"A message from your mistress," a voice says, drawled and uncultured and directed towards their driver, not her - Ella stays utterly still, her pulse the only thing thundering, and listens to the creak of the carriage as the driver shifts over. There's the shuffle of footsteps as the footman holds up what must be a fold of paper, and the driver's grunts as he struggles back across the bench to unfold it under the lantern.

It seems to take an age. Ella's feet are cramping in her beautiful shoes, desperate to be dancing.

"Finally," the driver grunts, and there's an awful lot of noise at once as he jumps down off the seat and makes the horses fidget in annoyance. The two men stomp off together, into the promise of the long hours of warmth that Stepmother's message will have given, and Ella counts twenty breaths as she sits silent in the darkness.

There's a hint of whiskey in the air, between the smell of the horses and the brisk cold of the night, when her feet touch the pebbles. The palace stands shining and splendid a short walk ahead, and she can hear the swell of the orchestra already, spilling out across the lawns towards her like a siren song.

She's not here for the music, of course, and the dancing will only be a means to an end but she will look radiant doing it. There are many ways for a woman to make herself unforgettable, Stepmother says. The first step is to make an unmissable entrance.

Ella holds her chin high, and starts towards the palace that stands shining and splendid a short walk ahead. She will walk up the steps unobserved, no carriage in sight, arriving at the ball as if by magic. Her gown glitters with the dust of a dozen fairies (a well-paid, small-handed seamstress, who looks at Ella as though all the diamonds in the world are behind her eyes. Ella is kind to her, of course. Small hands are so useful). Her shoes are made of of the most dazzling crystal (fine Venetian glass, which surely cost a fortune to whoever had them imported. Such a shame that sailors are so clumsy. So easily distracted, and the box made such a splash when it hit the water).

She will keep her smile meek, and her voice hushed. She will be everything a woman must be in public, and she will dance with one man, and she will marry him. 

Stepmother wants her to capture the Prince, and so she shall.


End file.
